From there, the lines painted images of joyous movement, intense colors, and of trees dressed in “crimson”. I wondered what that was, crimson. It sounded so luscious, so extraordinary to my eight year old ear. I could feel the exuberance of an Autumn party, though I didn’t know what all of the words in the poem meant. I was vibrating with exhilaration by the poem’s end and knew then that I, too, wanted to write and make others feel the way this poem had lifted me out of the classroom into another realm. Poetry, in its vivid imagery, its simplicity, and its personification had called me to the land of enchantment.

Now, as an adult, living in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles, words like opossum and hawk are as rare and exotic as crimson was to me as a child. So I linger in those places where I can capture them in the lines and rhythms of life where they still exist.